Saturday, October 25, 2008

Autumn

I don’t know how to capture autumn around here. I just know that it is achingly beautiful. The grasses are yellow and gold and brown. The trees are all shades of yellow and red and some are still green. You can smell the overturned earth in the plowed fields. I never remember autumn being so visceral, something that I can recognize and know in my own body. They tell me that everything will change on Monday, when we are expecting our first freeze.

Somewhere I once heard the words, death is as gentle as a falling leaf. It seems almost miraculous that I can watch this, day by day.

3 comments:

We are having one of the most gorgeous autumns here as well. I call them tapestry colours. The first frost changes things as the last of the leaves fall, but the bare trees also have their stark beauty. Do you smell wood burning as well? (Not the best thing for our environment, I hear.)

I smell the wood, Barbara, and wish that I had a fireplace or stove so that I could burn wood too! But, like you say, it may not be the best thing for the air.

Our trees just around here are very young and small, and each street in the neighborhood has a different type of tree planted on it. So the trees are all turning differently. The ones just infront of where we live look like they're just turning brown before falling.

This change/turning is all so in-your-face, I find it both disconcerting and awesome at the same time. Being in Florida for so many years made us like little kids seeing it for the first time.

My favorite is when there is rain on the leaves and they become an outrageous, day-glo yellow or red. Against a grey sky that is some sight.In Montreal there are lots of folks with fireplaces and it creates quite a bit of smog in the winter.